I pulled a card out of my T-shirt pocket and placed it on the table between us. Aggie took it up and rubbed it gently, as if feeling the texture of the paper, but I knew she was feeling my energies stored in it. “You have decided to keep your true nature from me?” she asked.
“I’m sorry.” I bowed my head deeply as I had seen my father do so long ago. My father! The memory of his face rose in my mind, nose sharp and cutting. I blinked back tears at the new/old memory. As formally as I could, I said, “I give thanks for your help. I’ll provide protection as I’m able. For now, may I know who owns the property behind the house and into the woods and swamp?”
“The property borders on the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park, so the government owns most of it. I’m not sure who owns the rest, though there is privately held land dotted all around here, like my family’s land.”
Park land. Crap. That meant the rogue vamp had acres and acres to roam, and no one to stop him. Except for me. And this stern, delicate shaman. “Thank you for your time,” I said.
“I offer my counsel and the use of the sweathouse. If you go into battle ill prepared, you fight to lose. I sense it has been some time since you went to water. Purification and smudging will help you, center you, let you find what you seek.”
Some time. Yeah, you could say that. The weight of decades pressed onto me, heavy and fraught with pain. “I may take you up on that,” I said.
Aggie pursed her lips. “You’re lying to me. You have no intention of taking me up on anything. Why not?” She cocked her head, little bird fashion. “Is it the same reason why you won’t tell me about yourself?”
I backed to the door, my eyes on hers, my most disarming smile firmly in place. This woman was way too smart for me to hang around any longer. “Thank you, Grandmother, for your help and counsel.”
She made a sound I hadn’t heard in years, but which was instantly familiar. Sort of a snort, a pshaw, and a single syllable of negation. It was very much a sound tied to The People, as “alors” is tied to the French, and “cool” is tied to generations of Americans. “Dalonige’i,” she said, and I stopped at the sound of my name. “It isn’t a traditional name. It means more than yellow rock, you know.” When I lifted my brows in question, she said, “It also means gold—one reason why the Nation was stolen from the Cherokee, why The People were set on the Trail of Tears, so the white man could dig dalonige’i from the earth of the Appalachian Mountains.”
This time I didn’t react to the words, but I knew she still saw more than I wanted anyone to see. “My thanks,” I said again. And I backed out her front door onto her stoop, into the heat and bright sun.
I kick-started my bike and took off for home. As I rode, I considered what I had learned, not about myself—that was for later reflection—but about the thing I chased. Beast was wrong. It wasn’t a liver-eater—I had seen it and it had no long fingernail. It was a vamp. A seriously whacked-out, flesh-eating, rotten-smelling vamp to be sure, but a vamp. A vamp gone way bad. An old, mad, rotting rogue.
Though my nose wasn’t as good as Beast’s, I still had better olfactory senses than any human. Standing in my backyard, I held the bit of cloth to my nose and breathed in, parsing the pheromones and proteins that made up the four distinct scents, three of them human and heavy with fear, alive when their blood was spilled. Perhaps Beast’s memory helped, but I could actually partition the human scents into one female and two male humans. And beneath it all was the scent of the thing I was chasing. I drew in its chemical signature. Vamp. Definitely vamp. Weird vamp, rotting vamp, but vamp. I shuddered with relief, allowing myself a small moment to relax at the certainty. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a skinwalker gone bad.
Returning to the bit of cloth, I isolated the differing chemicals in it, finally detecting the faintest tang of the woman the rogue had been with. Caught the smell of sex. And something even fainter, that I hadn’t placed. Or perhaps hadn’t remembered. I breathed in again. Shivered. Breathed in yet again, this time through open mouth, tongue extended. Chill bumps rose on my skin. My breath stopped. The scent of The People. I sat down heavily, landing unsteadily on the steps to the back porch. Is the rogue vamp I’m hunting . . . Cherokee?